MacZealots was live at Steve Jobs' Macworld Keynote address and we have a wrapup of all the major announcements that took place during the event.

This year’s Macworld Expo kicked off, once again, with a keynote presentation by Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs. The keynote address is known for such groundbreaking announcements as the Apple/Microsoft partnership, the iPod mini and the first public display of Mac OS X. Today’s event was no exception.

As the lights dimmed in the Moscone center auditorium, the mass of Apple fans applauded as Steve took the stage donning the customary blue jeans and black turtleneck.

Retail & iPod + iTunes

The presentation began with an update on Apple’s fledgeling retail stores. In Apple’s 135 shops around the world, they had over 26 million visitors during the holiday season. With all of those visitors, they also had their first $1 billion sales quarter with total revenues of $5.7 billion. In other words, the retail stores are a major success.

Steve followed up his discussion of the retail sector with what is the cause of much of the retail stores’ success: the iPod. Apple sold over 14 million iPods in the holiday season. That’s 100 iPods sold every minute. In total, Apple has sold over 42 million iPods (about 10 of those to the MacZealots crew). Amazingly, 32 million of those iPods were sold in 2005.

Jobs announced that the iTunes Music Store is selling over three million songs a day and has an 83% market share over its competition. The company has also sold over eight million television shows since October 12. Along with the Bowl Championship football games added last week, Apple is today adding content from NBC’s Saturday Night Live, including classic skits like the Blues Brothers, Coneheads and other classics from former SNL comedians.

With all the usual updates out of the way, Jobs began to introduce his first new product: an iPod remote control with FM Tuner. The device works with current iPods and adds a new radio screen to the iPod so that you can tune into radio stations through your iPod. It will cost $49.

He concluded this portion of the keynote with a new iPod silhouette ad.

“That’s what we’re up to in music. BUT … It’s Macworld. So we’re gonna spend the rest of the day talking about the Mac,” Jobs said.

Widgets

There are about 1,500 Dashboard widgets available for Mac OS X Tiger. With Mac OS X 10.4.4, which was released today, Apple will be releasing several new widgets. The first is a Google widget which allows for searching of Google without having to open Safari. A new Address Book widget is also available to allow you to sift through your Mac OS X contacts. An ESPN Widget gives you the latest sports scores live on your Dashboard.

Also made available was a Calendar widget and a Ski widget so that you can get the latest snow conditions wherever you like to hit the slopes.

All of these are available today as part of Mac OS X 10.4.4.

iLife ‘06: iPhoto

As is customary at every Macworld, Apple also announced a new release of their iLife suite of applications: iLife ‘06. Jobs claimed that it is a “giant” release. We couldn’t agree more.

The first iLife application discussed was iPhoto. Like we hear every year, iPhoto is faster and can hold even more photos. This time it’s 250,000 photos in your library. Along with the enhanced storage capabilities you can also edit your photos in full screen mode similar to that of Aperture.

One nice new enhancement to iPhoto is that when you scroll through your photos, a gray box showing the month number floats in the middle as you pass each month by. This is beneficial if you have a general idea of when you took a photo but have thousands of photos that you have to sift through.

Also inside iPhoto ‘06 is new sharing capabilities. There are new birthday cards, calendars and books that you can make and purchase through the application to share with your family. The calendars can be more than 12 months and will show all special holidays and US events. There was no word at the Keynote as to whether calendars were going to be available for international users.

You can also share your photos online as a Photocast - Apple’s new term for sharing photos over the Internet (Podcasting. Photocasting. Get it?).

Photocasting is as simple as picking a Photo album, pushing a button and uploading the photos to .Mac. You can then allow your friends and family to subscribe to your photo stream using RSS. When you upload your photos, you can then send an announcement e-mail to your contacts letting them know where the can see the photos. If they have a Mac with iPhoto ‘06 they will be able receive the photos directly in there. Otherwise, they can view it in Safari RSS or any other RSS aggregators.

Jobs gave a great explanation for this functionality. Imagine your grandmother having her screen saver set to be photos of the grandchildren. Every time the parents update their Photocasted iPhoto album, grandma gets new photos without doing any work.

To use this service, you will need a .Mac account.

iLife ‘06: iMovie & iDVD

Last year was the year of HD for iMovie. This year is the year of production. iMovie now has animated themes, real-time effects and several new audio tools. Real-time effects are a feature that has been in the Final Cut line of products for years now and help eliminate the painful process of rendering your your titles and transitions as you are editing your movie.

iDVD was enhanced with a few new features as well. The first is widescreen menu support for people with widescreen televisions. No longer will they have the black bars on the side of their television. The Magic Movie feature from last year’s iMovie release is now part of iDVD as well. Called Magic iDVD, this feature allows you to select your theme, drop your movies in, add photos and then click a button to have your DVD burn.

iDVD finally supports third party DVD burners: a feature that has long been asked for by the Mac faithful. If you have an external Firewire or USB2 DVD burner you can now use iDVD.

iLife ‘06: GarageBand

GarageBand is shifting towards podcasting with its new podcast studio. The new version includes over 200 free jingles and sound effects, a speech enhancer and the ability to use iChat for interviews. Jobs demoed recording a podcast with GarageBand. You can also drag artwork onto your Podcast directly into GarageBand.

In a humorous jab at the internet community he titled his Podcast, “Steve’s Super Secret Apple Rumors Podcast.” As his final podcast production played, Jobs’ podcast speculated that there would be an 8 pound iPod with a 10” screen.

Along the same lines as GarageBand, Apple announced that a new world music Jampack is being made available for those that enjoy the music loops.

iLife ‘06: iWeb

A few days ago the Internet was abuzz with what iWeb was, and now we know. It is a new application to share photos, movies, music, blogs and other types of content on the Web. The application includes templates for creating your Web page and the iLife media browser that you find in iDVD and iMovie so you can easily add music and photos from your respective iTunes and iPhoto libraries.

iWeb includes RSS subscriptions as part of its 1-click .Mac publishing support so that your viewers can keep abreast of your new content easily.

One advanced feature of iWeb is that any slideshow you upload via iWeb uses AJAX technology to navigate through the photo stream. AJAX is the same technology used in Web applications like Gmail to automatically refresh your Inbox. It basically pulls data from the Web site without having to refresh your Web browser.

Creating a Web site using iWeb is just as easy as creating a newsletter in Pages or a presentation in Keynote. It features drag-and-drop zones for placing your content and alignment guides to help you get the best looking page possible.

It seems like iWeb is the central hub for all of the iLife applications at this point. It allows you to share your videos from iMovie, photos and slideshows from iPhoto and your podcasts from GarageBand. No word as to whether it will let you upload your iTunes library. We will find out later this week.

iLife will cost $79 and is available today. Head to your local Apple store and grab a copy.

iWork ‘06

Jobs briefly mentioned an update to the iWork suite of applications. New features include 3D charts, advanced image editing, reflections (similar to the Front Row effect), tables with calculations and new themes. He didn’t offer a demo because he wanted to discuss the new Macs.

Intel Is Now Inside

In all of my life, I never imagined that an Intel bunny would be on the same stage as Steve Jobs, but today it happened. Under the bunny suit was Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini and he announced that both Apple and Intel are ready to make the transition today.

The first Intel Mac is the iMac. The new Intel iMac has the same hardware specifications and design as the iMac G5, but is 2-3x faster thanks to the Intel Core Duo chip now found inside. This is the same dual core technology found in the Power Mac G5s. It’s similar to having two processors but on a single chip. Each core on the Core Duo chip is faster than the G5 chip.

Along with the new iMac is the announcement that Mac OS X 10.4.4 is entirely native on the Intel processor. All applications are universal binaries so that they run full strength on both Intel and PowerPC Macs. The new iLife and iWork applications are also universal binaries.

Other applications such as Final Cut, Aperture and Logic Pro will be universal by March. You can trade in your discs for a Universal one for $49.

Jobs brought out Roz Ho from Microsoft to discuss how well Office runs on the Rosetta technology on the iMac. Rosetta allows you to run your non-universal binary Mac applications on the new Intel Macs. Microsoft also stated they will be releasing several updates soon to provide sync services with hand-held devices and Microsoft Entourage. These updates will be available in March.

Microsoft also announced that it’s committed to shipping a version of Office for the Mac for the next five years at least.

The MacBook Pro

The Powerbook is dead. Say hello to MacBook Pro. Apple was unable to put a G5 processor in the Powerbook because of heat and power consumption issues, so the new MacBook Pro uses the same Intel Core Duo chip found in the new iMac.

These new laptops are 4-5 times faster than the last generation of Powerbook G4s and feature a 15.4” LCD screen that is just as bright as the cinema displays. The new MacBook Pro also has a built-in iSight camera and IR sensor so that it can be used with the Apple Remote.

Another nice feature of the new MacBook Pro is that the power adapter is magnetically held in. If you ever trip over your power cord or yank it out accidently, it will come right out without causing any damage to your machine.

$1999	$2499
1.67 Ghz Intel Core Duo	1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo
667 MHz
512 MB 667 Mhz DDR2	1 GB 667 Mhz DDR2
80 GB SATA	100 GB SATA
4X Superdrive
ATI Radeon X1600
Airport Extreme & Bluetooth
ExpressCard Slot

The new machines are available in February and start at $1999. I know I will be ordering one.

How ‘bout Them Apples?

Jobs closed the show by thanking the Apple employees who made this transition possible as well as Intel for providing the new chips and a new direction for Apple to take. He then showed a picture of himself and Steve Wozniak and noted that it will be 30 years since Apple began on April 1st.

Apple pretty much hit on every cylinder with this Keynote. The new iLife upgrades are enticing, the transition to Intel six months early has us very excited and the quick transition of all of the Mac applications to universal binaries is reassuring.

Stay tuned to MacZealots for more in-depth coverage Macworld Expo throughout the week. We will be posting booth recaps and photos all week.

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